Friday, November 18, 2016

Do you have people?

When times get tough, it's a good thing to have people. I have people. Some of my people sent me things this past week.

Diane made an envelope out of a magazine page and filled it with two of her collage pieces. They were created just for me. The wishes and sentiments fit me to a tea.

That is what Keith sent me -- tea. Harney and Sons Capri. Even Harney (or the Sons) sent me a little something, two extra teabags.

A Wisewoman sent me a postcard that encouraged me to be myself and, strangely, full of tea.

Mindy sent a postcard too. "Good friends are like stars. You don't always see them but you know they are always there."

She says I am there for her too, even when I am in a mess. It's what you do. You are present for people who need you. When you can't immediately be present, you send your voice, your words, your wishes, or a little tea. Tea and sympathy.

My government and the people represented threw me for a loop. I suffered sexual battery as a child and was raped as a young woman. I've spent a lot of years trying to put that into a place inside me that is cushioned by therapy and soul work. That work enabled me to pull outside of myself and my own pain to help others who have suffered. I have encouraged others to get help. My recovery seemed something I could count on.

I forgot that recovery is a process. It's like remission, not a cure. And just like that, my future president says he can grab any woman's private parts because he is a star.

I found out that sexual predators are like stars too. You don't always see them but you know they are always there.

So I fell off the edge of my safe place on this planet. But I have people. My people make a tether to hold me close and pull me back.

Do you have people? #raiseyourhand Ask for help.
Do you have people? #lookforthehurting Be the help.

Book Shelf

Can It Really Be Taught?: resisting lore in Creative Writing Pedagogy by Ritter and Vanderslice

thisconnectionofeveryonewithlungs by Juliana Spahr

One Big Self: an Investigation by C D Wright

Scratch Sides by Kristin Prevallet

An Essay in Asterisks by Jena Osman

Shut Up Shut Down by Mark Nowak

Don't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine

Commons by Myung Mi Kim

Remember to Wave by Kaia Sand

Blue Front by Martha Collins

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Zong by M. NourbeSe Philip and Setaey Adamu Boateng

The Midnight by Susan Howe

The Nonconformist's Memorial by Susan Howe

Selected Poems of Charles Olson

Paterson by William Carlos Williams

12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright

The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose by T S Eliot

ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound

The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje

Fuck You - Aloha - I Love You by Juliana Spahr

Bad History by Barrett Watten

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids by Herman Melville

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

The Cantos of Ezra Pound

The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer by Mark Allen

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

Insel by Mina Loy

Wallace Stegner: Angle of Repose; Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier; Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West; Crossing to Safety